


amidst the starlit wreckage

by Gildedstorm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Books of Sorrow, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21660667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedstorm/pseuds/Gildedstorm
Summary: Destiny prompts and challenges. Currently: can't stop writing about the Fundament.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	1. a new look (guardian, eva levante)

“Well?” Eva says, clasping her hands and trying not to look too hopeful. The cloak is one left behind by a Hunter passing through the Farm, and has seen better days, but the long tear through the middle of it has been patched with leather and twine. Oni did always like the more rugged looks, especially before a mission.

She – like all of them, Eva feels – has also seen better days. The red paint Oni favours is scuffed and weathered, and holds herself with the uneasy grace of a wild creature, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.

But she isn’t bolting yet, and instead tugs at the cloak’s collar, fusses with the hood. Stalling, of course.

“Oni.”

Exos can’t grimace like humans do, but Eva has known enough of them by now to catch the uncertain flicker of light, and the pained look sent her way. “It’s... nice. I like it. But it’s a _Hunter’s_ cloak. Eva, I’m...”

Eva is also used to this, the frustrated and stilted pause of looking for a word, or even the memory of how the thought started. There is a brief conference with Oni’s Ghost, who appears to whisper at her, until her gaze swings back to where Eva is waiting.

“I’m _retired_ ,” she says at last.

“Was that the first word you were going to use?” Eva asks mildly, and Oni’s lights flicker rueful laughter.

“I wanted... deserter, but Miraj said I was being dramatic.”

“I may rarely say this –” Because, as a rule, Miraj is as deliberately impolite a Ghost as any she has ever met. “– but he is right. Retired is much better. And it means we suit each other.” She draws herself up to her full height and reaches up to pats Oni’s armoured shoulder. “The Vanguard has far too much on their hands to bother with one retired Guardian helping me with a few errands. And if anyone else does, I will make sure they have greater concerns than hassling my assistant.”

This time Oni laughs aloud, the sound fuzzy around the edges. “Okay, fine. As long as I’m under your protection.” A pause, as she looks down and takes in the rest of her muddied and crumbling gear. “I... don’t suppose you’ve got some spare boots around here?” Her voice is plaintive.

Eva bustles away to look, and to hide her own relieved smile.


	2. glimmer of hope (sathona, xi ro, aurash, taox)

“Traitors! I’ll kill all of you!” Xi Ro cries, hurtling at the knights in their path. Aurash stares at the prone form of their father, arms still outstretched.

Sathona does not look at the knights who loom bright and terrible and _wrong_ , or her father the king, whose back was turned when they struck him down, or even at Taox, who is watching all of this with terrible calm.

Taox is mechanic and engineer first, reluctant mentor second – or third, now, with usurper taking that place. This is a decision that must have been made after long thought, the cost – however cruel – somehow outweighed, though Sathona could not begin to glimpse the shape of what it was balanced against.

The benefit of wisdom carved from a life longer than a handful of years. A wisdom Sathona herself would never have, now.

She looks at the pale husk that was her father’s familiar, tumbled to the floor and forgotten. She looks at it, and it speaks to her in a voice that is not a voice, stitched together from the hiss of rain biting into stone, and the charged silence of seafire setting the horizon alight.

The dead worm says, in its voice of danger: _You can save yourself. You can save your sisters._

It says: _You can survive this,_ _but only if you listen._

When Xi Ro snarls and flings a handful of light at the Helium Drinkers – even Sathona, who saw her reach for the bait stars at her belt and had prepared for it, nearly turns to look, and her nerves sing with **[bright/safe/warm]** – she picks it up and tucks it into the crook of her arm. Not even wise, far-sighted, traitorous Taox sees her do it.

It is silent all through the flight from the court to the shore where Aurash’s ship waits. It is only once Aurash is at the helm and Xi Ro sleeps slumped against her shoulder that Sathona dares to lift the stiff, weightless thing to eye level.

“Tell me,” she whispers. “Tell me how to save us.”

And it does.


	3. a long shadow (taox)

“You have nothing to fear here,” Chroma-Admiral Rafriit says, curling his arms in a gesture Taox takes to be reassurance. “Even if these Deep-blighted find a ship, only a fraction of them can leave the planet. You are safe from their hunt, and they will be swept away. This I vow.” He wields authority with grace and ease, and Taox cannot help but look at him with bitter envy for it.

There is much to envy about the Ammonite. Their moon glitters with ships coming and going, resonates with the deep hum of distant engines, greater than any she could have dreamt up. It is barely a day since the final ships capable of flight were destroyed on her orders, and the thought of _what could have been if_ – if not for the king’s madness, if not for the court’s withering, if not for the worms, _if, if, if_ – it bleeds like an open wound.

Anyone left on the Fundament is twice doomed, once by the syzygy and once by her hand.

She will bear this weight for every long year of her life, though now she doubts she will live much longer at all, whatever Rafriit’s assurances, or the Ammonite’s faith in the knowledge the strange, weightless moon overhead has granted them. (Taox knows moons, knows tides, as any engineer who has dealt with the Fundament’s waves knows them, and it is difficult to trust something so vast, with so little _presence._ )

“I hope that you are right, Chroma-Admiral,” she says, as graciously as she can manage. He abandons her after that for more pressing duties than the care of a single krill.

Perhaps it is insight, granted after long years of struggle, that has her ask for a ship long before the Leviathan breaches out of the Fundament, and its hunters – she glimpses them from orbit, uncoiling from the planet with sinuous and hungry grace – follow.

But Taox rather thinks it is fear.


	4. 9 (guardian, xûr)

“Where’s he hanging out today?” Oni asks.

Miraj squints at her, the points of his shell flaring out. “I’m not the only one who can check the City networks, you know.”

“Who was the one bragging about being a superior mechanical lifeform last week?” she shoots back, examining her hands as if admiring her nonexistent nails. It’s one of her favourite gestures. It’s just so blatantly _unnecessary_. “You know I have to stop what I’m doing to connect.”

“There are patches for that. There’s all sorts of modded Braytech floating around, if you know where to look. Which I do, being _superior_.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves his point off, even though it stings. They both know she won’t go looking for modifications anytime soon. “You’ve searched already, haven’t you?”

“Hangar,” he mutters. “Though you’d have found him, if you were paying attention.”

He’s right, as Ghosts tend to be. Now that she’s looking for it, she can see the steady trickle of Guardians just happening to pass through the corridor leading to the hangar. Never enough to be a crowd, but always at least one or two people going in, and then emerging just a few minutes later.

The Vanguard allows Xûr in, probably because it’d be too much of a hassle to try to keep him out. But as much as Guardians love powerful gear – even Oni can’t deny the thrill of something that hits her circuitry with the jolt of the new and unknown – as a rule they won’t linger around anything they can’t punch or understand. Xûr is well outside either of those categories.

“If the Nine are so powerful, I wonder why they don’t make him less... creepy,” Miraj whispers as she wanders over. There’s a Warlock ahead of them, giving serious thought to an antlered helm. They’re well out of earshot, but Xûr unerringly turns, limbs jerking as if yanked by conflicting impulses, to stare at her.

Miraj phases out of sight, and Oni doesn’t blame him. The sight of the seething darkness beneath Xûr’s hood always makes her miss a step. There’s something about him that seems intrinsically _wrong_.

But nearly everyone feels that way, which is why she’s here. The fear that someone is looking too closely is, for once, not in her head. It’s the opposite of a soothing situation, but somehow it helps for her thoughts and feelings to have an easy, obvious cause.

“The Nine watch your steps,” he tells her as the Warlock leaves and she strolls closer. Oni shrugs, faking the typical Hunter nonchalance for someone who probably won’t even recognize it. Still, it’s expected, and it makes her feel better.

“Then they must be getting pretty bored by now. Is that a thing they can be? Bored?”

“It is not for the vessel to understand the nature of what fills it,” he says, helpfully.

“ _Creepy,_ ” Miraj hisses to her, still safely hidden.

“...Right. I’m just – I’m just gonna chill here while I decide what to get,” Oni says, and plunks herself down on the hangar floor, well out of reach.

Xûr twitches, caught in a long, slow spasm. “The dust remembers and is renewed. There is time yet for this.”

Which almost sounds like permission, so she’ll take it.


	5. a day off (oryx, xivu arath, savathûn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to have seven prompts done by the time the new year rolled around, but that didn't work out. still, I'm proud of how much I got done! it's been a bad two years for my ability to write consistently, so even this is a victory
> 
> yes I could just take all these prompts and use them for the hive

Fevrun dies as every world before it has. It thrashes in its death throes, it mobs knights with swarms of desperate survivors, it sends out panicked transmissions that Savathûn’s fleet catch in frequency nets and pry apart like a delectable secret.

Fevrun bleeds out, and the Hive feast upon it and pick the galaxy clean of every trace. Well-fed and sated with the sweet glory of purpose, the war moons and ascendant armies and covens drift. Soon, their gods will find a new quarry, and they will give chase to the next system, the next civilization.

Now is the time for rich and slow digestion, for growth, for the deep ache of new and sharper forms.

Far from the dead space that was Fevrun, their gods walk as echoes, their passage marked in bursts of static and wisps of corrosive air.

“This is boring,” Xivu Arath, god of war and leader of endless armies, says, head propped upon one mighty hand. “I’m bored. It’s been days of sitting and watching. Haven’t you seen enough already?”

The Szkehci would make good prey. Their ships flit in and out of atmosphere around them, the shining armoured plates of their hulls sloughing off of the pilots and taking shape mid-flight. She seethes to test her might against such an adaptable people. She wants to see if they can forge a weapon sharp enough to slay her.

Would such a weapon describe her? Would she rise up from her own blood, named in that instant? She wants to find out.

“I could kill you,” Oryx says without turning from his study of the calcified city. “And rid you of boredom.”

“You could _try_.” The air shudders away from the bared teeth of her grin.

“If you do,” Savathûn points out, dry as slow poison, “you will alert the whole system. But by all means, make this a waste of _all_ of our time.”

Xivu settles back, rolling her shoulders as if she still might try it. Her sister would not punish their interference in her affairs now – it would come later, a slow death or a chain of curses while her armies’ tithes wither away. Better to court such a gift when they are through with this system entirely, and there is only the hunt left once more.

“Until the fleets are ready, then.” An easy admission. The Szkehci are masters of matter, and they change as the Hive do – only quick as thought, from one moment to the next. Of course her brother would yearn to understand it, and take that secret for them all. “If you’re still here after that, we won’t wait for you.”

Oryx looks at her then, and even as an echo his eyes burn like furious stars. Xivu feels the weight of his gaze and loves him for it. “As if I would allow you to leave me behind.”

“Remember,” Savathûn murmurs. “He was worse with the Qugu.” Oryx pretends to ignore that, but his wings fan out with the sound of cracking bone as they laugh.

For a moment she is giddy with the sense of it. They have come so far, done so much, and she stands on the universe’s edge as it hones itself ever sharper. And yet this moment is only a single step from the long nights of making star maps with Aurash. She holds the past and the future in her hands, and they are both as close to her as her worm and her heart.

Like this, she cannot be defeated. Like this, they can go on forever.


	6. hiraeth i (oryx, xixu arath, savathûn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [CoffeeCats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeCats)! I went slightly feral and had to break it into two pieces

“We should mask ourselves,” Sathona – no, Savathûn now – says, arms full of worms. They are all on the needle-ship’s hull, safe from the ocean in a bubble of air she has made for them, tangling worms in the great swathes of nets that trail behind the continent. When the nets are pulled up, the worms will burrow away inland, to hide and wait.

Another of her ideas, in case they cannot reach the ship again once they land. As always, it is a good one.

“We have been running and hiding this whole time,” Xivu Arath says, plucking a worm from where it is curling around her armoured shoulders, still raw from the shaping of it. “For a year of our lives! Aren’t you sick of it?”

“If we do not change our voices, our scents, Taox at least will know us. We will waste time fighting knights to reach her, and she will prepare a trap, or turn our people against us.”

“Some of us have changed our voices already,” Xivu says, for her and Auryx’s voices have deepened, and boom and scrape in their throats. Savathûn’s has only grown a little drier, and hisses when she is impatient.

“You just want to fight them,” she says, not hissing yet, and her sister shrugs, to the dismay of several more worms.

“They deserve it! And no one else will.”

“And you must test your strength,” Auryx says, slowly. They are still learning just what they have promised themselves to. What they will bind their people to, if they survive.

Savathûn considers them both, middle eye narrowing in thought. “There is that. But if we can deceive her, enter the court as diplomats from a distant court, we will pass the traitor guards and the Helium Drinkers. We will have a chance to strike at the heart of this.”

It is a good plan, a neat one, and they are all hungry for vengeance. Still, Auryx knows she says it because she is pursuing her true nature just as Xivu Arath is.

“I do not want a battle,” he says at last. _Save only what can be saved_ , the gods had told him. “But how will our people believe us if we triumph only through deceiving them? They must trust us, if they are to take the worm and survive.”

“So we are to announce ourselves to our enemy,” Savathûn says.

“We are Taox’s students,” he tells her, quelling thoughts of her stern, practical lessons, or the long night where she painstakingly explained the engines to him. That practicality had turned her against them in the end. “We know what she is like, how she thinks, and we have done and learned so much in exile. I know you can craft a trap for her.”

He grips her shoulder in assurance, though she feels frail and brittle to the touch. They have all been worn ragged by the hunger that shadows their new strengths.

“Long Thought,” his sister names him, her eyes sea fire-bright. “As long as you see a path, we will clear the way for you.”

“With a cutting mind and a cutting arm,” Xivu Arath says, as she tosses the last of the worms into the nets.

“Then we will return as ourselves, and lay claim as the court’s true heirs” Auryx says, and maybe only the worm within him can sense his true thoughts; if they live or die, this will be the last time that it is home. They will change it, as they have been changed, and the future will be sharp-toothed and hungry.

But it is the only way he can see, and he is the navigator. He must chart the course.


	7. hiraeth ii (oryx)

After he goes out into the Deep, Oryx only dreams of the Fundament once more.

He is his true self, sharp-edged and burning, and the Fundament’s oceans roil and steam as he wades into them. He does not even feel the sting of the waves. They would have meant death for him once, but now he is far deadlier than the water, or the bitter rain, or the storm-joys with their lures.

Deadlier, but not here to bring death. He is here to remember.

Past the Tungsten Monoliths he walks, as the waters rise around him. Past Kaharn, still stubbornly standing despite the ruin they had made of it by the end. The continents float aimlessly, drifting on currents too weak to shift him – his own among them, the engines sabotaged when Taox fled. Yet he recognizes it still, the glint of the lightning-rod towers, the eggshell-curve of his father’s orrery. Once the sight of it on the horizon had meant shelter and safety, though he does not regret outgrowing it.

(There is no safety anywhere, and Taox had been the first to teach him that.)

Oryx does not stop, he does not look back, and the Osmium Court is dragged behind him by the current he carves. Deeper he goes, until the water is at his shoulders, and his wings cut trails in his wake. Here are the ancient monsters of the depths, and they shrink away and wither before him. Deeper still, and he walks upon plates of metal which shudder with the weight of the world. Ahead lies the crushing stillness where he found his gods. It is empty now of all living things but for him, moving in a place that demands an end to motion. The water has long since turned molten.

This is where their dive ended. They turned back towards the surface, towards vengeance and salvation. Anything further is the metaphor of dreamstuff, and the only secrets to be found will be his own. Yet this does not trouble him as he comes to where the pressure drags a little, the heat pleasantly searing. There he kneels down and claws at the burning stone until the planet’s core is revealed.

It is such a small thing, a kernel of heat and light cupped in one hand. (Just as his father held the black sun, and the Deep held him.) He brings it to his mouth, he swallows it down, and it is right, it is good, for his world to be part of him as he was once part of it. Now that he has outgrown it, left it behind, this is all that was left to be done.

Now, he will carry it with him always.


	8. embers (hive oc)

Chirraek kindles the ritual fire in their hands, and it reflects back in the acolyte’s eyes three times over. Once, the ancient krill had eaten jelly to trigger metamorphosis, but the Hive require a more potent substance to keep from taxing the body to starvation by the change.

Like all secrets of wizards, it is well guarded. Chirraek happens to be freer with it than most.

Not out of generosity - it is one link in a long chain of favours and alliances. No one acts or reacts in the High Coven without being tethered by those chains - except perhaps the Witch-Queen herself. Yet even she has siblings….

The acolyte leans forward, hungry for what the change will bring - likely imagining power to lay waste to whole worlds, glittering seams of secrets to pry from the underbelly of the universe. It is not their duty to warn him that he will more probably be killed long before he attains either strength or knowledge.

It is tempting to wait and study him a moment longer. Is it ambition that makes him hungry? Does he know enough to temper pride with stubborn, starveling will? But he is just one acolyte, and not one of their own, and they simply do not have _time_.

“Are you prepared?” they ask instead.

“I have been for all my life, ascendant,” he assures them, earnest and unaware that this is the most laughable thing he could have possibly said. Nonetheless, they tip the cup of their hands, and the flame pours down and catches in his. He cradles it, and there is a single instant of synchronicity that they savour each time; the ritual flame and the acolyte’s eyes as bright as each other, the first moment that he touches power more his than his worm’s.

They do enjoy seeing things move forward as they should. It is a small joy, but it is from these countless infinitesimal triumphs that the Hive’s devouring armies draw their strength.

They hope, as he swallows the spell whole, that this one will not be wasted.


	9. resonance (oryx, xivu arath, savathûn)

A parting of ways is not a simple thing, even for siblings who are now gods.

In Oryx’s books it is written in stone and fire as a swift and sudden decision, and Savathûn dryly offers to add in the weeks of meetings in each others’ throne worlds untangling armies and supply chains. Tithes are settled and renegotiated, children are fostered and exchanged to general dissatisfaction. Harmony is long since picked clean of anything that remembers the warmth of Sky by the time the fleets are ready, the war moons arrayed, the courts gathered.

Northward is Oryx’s throne, seething through the ancient bone and bitter metals of the Dreadnaught. Northward is Savathûn’s throne, fractal layers of reflections hidden behind corrosive fog. Northward is Xivu Arath’s throne, toiling foundries chained to a legion of stars. They meet at the crossroads for the last time, before the way is barred.

Oryx clasps Savathûn’s thorned shoulder and presses his horned crest against Xivu Arath’s helm.

“I will miss you, sisters.”

“You will,” Xivu Arath agrees. “But I have brought the cores of two sword-stars from my throne, so you do not forget me when you both are mapping death and defining cunning at the edges of the universe.”

“And I bring scry seeds from mine, so that you can look ahead for the cleverest path. And then, knowing the both of you,” Savathûn adds dryly, “not take it.”

Oryx laughs, and the ascendant realm keens around them, held taut between three equally commanding directions. If not for who they are, what they are, the air alone would slice them through.

“I have carved osmium from my throne,” he says. “So we remember what we have grown from, and what binds us. When we meet again, we shall wage such war that we three will be all that is left.”

These tokens exchanged, Savathûn flies into the black hole, and Xivu Arath leads her fleets to contested territories and Oryx maps the course of the Deep. The Hive continues on, a devouring tide rolling forward and sinking its ever-hungry teeth into every world it encounters. All is as it must be.

But then the son of Oryx picks up the trail of the Traveler, intending to offer it as a prize to his father, and his armies encircle the nothing-planet it’s chosen. He is killed for his pride by fools more desperate than he. What must be unravels.

Xivu Arath sees the shard of osmium splinter and crack, and her forges toll out like ceaseless thunder. Savathûn sifts a claw through the glittering powder of it and scours the Dreadnaught, wraith-like, for forgotten relics and kin. Their throne worlds drift close, bridged by rage and grief and the spinning of long-laid plans.

But never a crossroads again.


End file.
